Random mumblings of ARM/AArch64 developer.

Obsoleted but mainline

Lot was written about why upstreaming matters. And why it should be done earlier than later too. And I found out that I have perfect example.

Few days ago Linus Walleij contacted me with a question:

Hi Marcin, do you still have the Nomadik NHK8815 board? I’m contemplating fixing it to work some time, but haven’t got hold of one. I think it only needs a device tree actually, so we could hack it up at some conference if you’re at the same some time.

And then I realized that indeed — I still have it somewhere in my basement gathering dust. We quickly agreed on shipping it so Linus will be able to finish work on adding support for already obsolete board in mainline kernel.

For me NHK-15 is a perfect example of device which was supported in wrong way. When I got it 5 years ago it was already several kernel releases behind with 2.6.16.2 kernel (no stable updates even). I managed to get Poky Linux running on it but told clearly that it will gather dust after finishing task because for me board with no upstream support is worthless.

So board spent few weeks on my desk and then went back to the box and on shelf in basement. Then became forgotten. For 5 years. Today I opened box, checked contents, added some filling so it is ready for courier. Then I will forget about it again.

UPDATE: My Sim.One board joined NHK-15 as it is hard to find working device with EP93xx processor in it.